Ask Your Vet if They Have Any Specials (chs. 35-37)

In many practices they will have specials at certain times of the year on certain services. For many vet clinics, February is dental month. If your pet needs a dental cleaning under an anesthetic and your vet feels it can be postponed until dental month you can often save 10% or more by booking the procedure during that month.

Some vets will have a “senior’s month” where they give a discount for routine bloodwork that is done. In our practice, December is fecal month. (I know… there’s something odd about celebrating Christmas by giving a discount on poop samples). We offer a discount to encourage people to have their dog’s stool sample checked once a year.

At your next vet visit, ask your vet if they have any sales at particular times of the year. Or, if your vet has recommended a dentistry, some tests or even a surgical procedure ask if there is a particular time when they offer a discount.

Write Some Positive Reviews

This technique is a little unorthodox way to save money but itʼs worth a try! Ask your vet if they would give you a discount off of your vet bills in return for you spreading positive reviews about the hospital. Your vet will likely not have been approached with an idea like this before. It may work best if you start spreading the word first and then make a printout of all that you have done and bring it to the vet to show him or her your work.

Here are some things you can do on a regular basis to spread a good word about your vet hospital:

Write a letter to the editor of your local paper about what great service you had at your last vet visit.

Join some onl ine discussion forums and occasionally write a post about how great your vet is. If the forum lets you post a link, post a link to your vetʼs website. If you do this, be sure that not all of your posts are about the vet clinic otherwise you will be seen as a spammer.

Look for places that review local businesses such as Google business listings, www.dogster.com, www.ziplocal.com and more and write a positive review.

Once a month you can send your vet a list of the positive reviews you have written. Most of the stuff that people write about their vets online is negative. They usually complain about how expensive things are and how their vet didnʼt know what they were doing. If a vet clinic is continually praised all over the internet this is going to drive business their way.

Hopefully the vet will see the value in this and give you a discount on your vet bills.

Offer to start a Facebook Page

This is another technique which may or may not convince your vet to give you a break on fees. There are so many benefits of a business having a facebook page. If you can explain the benefits to your vet and then offer to set up or even run the page they may be willing to give you a discount off your vet bills.

Here are the benefits of a business having a facebook fan page:

Almost everyone these days uses facebook.

Letʼs say that “ABC Animal Hospital” has 100 fans on facebook. Everytime the hospital makes a post about their business on facebook it is seen on the homepage of each one of those 100 fans. If each of those fans has 150 friends (and many people have more than that), then “ABC Animal Hospital” has just been mentioned to 15,000 people.

All of those people can see your promotions, specials or anything else that you want to do to attract business to the practice.

A facebook page promotes customer loyalty. They will be more likely to stay with “ABC Animal Hospital” if they are hearing from them regularly.

You can ask your vet if they would simply like you to set up the page and leave the running of it to one of their staff. Or, you can offer to run the page for them.

To run the page you can take requests from the practiceʼs clients and forward them by email to the clinic. You can also contact the clinic on a regular basis to ask what type of things they would like you to promote on the page.